


Moments From the Hourglass

by Iambic



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-07
Updated: 2010-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-11 13:45:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/113043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/pseuds/Iambic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cobb has been dreaming again, though he'd much rather he weren't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moments From the Hourglass

They meet in a dream. It has been five years. Phillippa's in middle school, Dom is finding white hairs, and the memory of Mal -- still painful -- is just photographs now. No more dreams. And yet.

Arthur looks just like he did before. Then again, the dream self is shaped by self-identity; Dom himself is probably missing the lines and streaks that have slowly begun to encroach upon his once-youthful face. Arthur's suit is clean and crisp, his gun out of sight, his face creased in some kind of worry.

"Why are you here?" Dom asks. The walls are fluid, translucent; the light falls soft around them. A silhouette runs by at Dom's left.

"Looking for you," Arthur replies, and his voice echoes as if inside a cave.

Dom laughs, puts out a hand to touch the wall; it solidifies under his fingertips. It feels like any wall might, dry and powdery. "You found me." He removes his hand, and the solid area of wall ripples and falls back into the motion of its surroundings. "Ariadne's gotten better."

"I didn't think it would work," Arthur says. "I'm still not sure it's working."

"They look functional," Dom replies.

"I mean finding you."

Arthur's still got the creased worried look, which is beginning to make more sense. "I'm real," Dom says. "Are you?"

The walls pulse in once, twice. "We can't know for sure," Arthur says, looking down at his wrist Dom takes another sip of coffee, blinking at his daughter who somehow can muster the energy to eat _and_ complain about school. He's so tired.

\--

Coming home from work is a comforting routine: walk in, coat down, hug the kids, walk into the kitchen. Dinner cooked, days, discussed, dinner served. Evenings can change form to suit needs, but coming home remains ever the same. James got an A on his report. Phillippa scored a goal in PE soccer; she's thinking of trying out for the school team. Grandma glares at Dom from the other side of the table.

"You look like a wreck," she snaps at him, when he looks back at her. "If you're sick, don't pass it to the children." Not ever _his_ children. Always _the_ children. No one ever says it, but she still blames him for Mal.

"I'm not sick," he says, more for the kids than for her sake. "Just tired."

"Then for heaven's sake, go to sleep!" It's nothing, an excuse to get him out of the room, but he's tired, he really is. He takes it. Kisses the kids goodnight, clears his place, heads up to his dark and empty room. Undresses, lies down, closes his eyes. Opens them.

"Still a figment of my imagination?" Arthur asks.

The room's changed, and that more than anything is the giveaway. Dom's still surprised he made the leap. He hasn't dreamt in so long. The dresser's there, but bare of picture frames; the closet door is now shut, and the lamp on the bedside table instead of overhead. The room's dark, but there's more clutter than usual on the floor, and of course Arthur in his suit sitting at the foot of the bed.

It's one of those strange things that to most people would be only in their dreams but for Dom can never happen at all; he's thought about Arthur and his bed in conjunction before but never dreamt about it. Dreaming's work. Was work. And there was always Mal, in the back of his mind, waiting to ruin everything, anything. Arthur's always been straight lines and cool thinking anyway, never attainable, never even close.

Always cut a nice figure in a suit, though. That hasn't changed.

"One of us probably isn't real," Dom says. "It's not me."

"So you say," Arthur replies. "So we're at an impasse."

Dom doesn't do real dreams, doesn't remember how to just go with it. Lucid dreaming's all he knows. If he'd never heard of extraction he could probably reach out and touch. God knows it's been ages since he's slept with anyone; better in his head than not at all. But the possibility of Arthur really somehow being there... is ludicrous but unavoidable. Dom doesn't take the chance.

"If you're real," Arthur continues, "we're going to wake you up."

"You're warning me?"

Arthur looks him up and down. "Preparing you."

\---

The duck just declared rabbit season again and James is laughing himself sick at Dom's side. Phillippa sticks her head out of her room, tousled hair and angry eyes. "I'm _trying_ to talk on the phone. Daddy, make him turn it down!"

James sticks his tongue out at her. "No way."

"Nah, we'd better turn it down a little bit," Dom says; his head is aching, dully, constantly. Sleep. It's been ages since he's slept well. Last night he had that dream --

Pause. Rewind. Since when does he dream? Except last night he woke up hard and frustrated and that must have been a dream. He can't remember the dream. He remembers, barely, dreaming. He remembers, more vividly, wanting.

"Daddyyyyyyyyy!" complains Phillippa, insistent. Dom blinks, remembers, and turns down the television volume.

\--

"We're trying again," says Arthur, from behind him. Dom nearly bashes his head on a lamppost, turning around. The bridge is well-lit, wet and gleaming, and Arthur's somehow matte against it all.

"It worked," Dom tells him. "But how did you do it?"

"It failed," Arthur corrects. Looks him up and down again. "You haven't stopped dreaming."

The air's balmy, not warm. Dom would be uncomfortable in his pajamas, but he's fully dressed, hair heavy with the fog, nose and ears something approaching cold but not quite there yet. He picks up a hand and looks at it; it looks the same as ever. He steps forward, puts it on Arthur's shoulder; the fabric of his suit is damp, too.

He's being forward. He's not sure why he did it. He pulls his hand away again, wonders if he's dreaming on command, wonders if this is all just in his head. His head alone. In this light both his hand and Arthur's face look so pale. It could be a normal dream. Arthur's just watching him, collected, thoughtful, forehead creased like it was before. Before. Because he's dreamt this, two nights running. Three? More? They escape him like they did before he took in his training. Water through fingers.

"And you?" he asks.

"Short bursts," Arthur says. "No sedative. We were asleep for a long time."

"Doing what--" Dom starts to say, but Arthur looks up at the foggy sky. "What is it?" Dom asks instead, but then he hears it, faint and far away. That song. He hasn't heard it in five years, but the familiarity is unmistakeable.

"You're waking up." Arthur doesn't refute it, doesn't acknowledge it. He's still watching Dom. He always did that, before, like he was trying to predict Dom's next move, like he was trying to figure him out. Dom's got his secrets locked away somewhere, the ones Ariadne doesn't know, but Arthur's probably working other things out. Researching. That's his thing.

The music goes quiet but doesn't fade out entirely. It's still somewhere between his ears, infiltrating his consciousness. "It's hard to believe you're real. Even though I don't dream on my own. Funny how that works."

"Wouldn't it make more sense for you to have projected me in someone else's construction?"

Well, that would make sense, except: "What could anyone possibly want from me?"

"You're a security gap. There's no knowing what you know."

Dom crosses his arms. No gun. He could dream one up, but he's still not keen on going back to creating. "Are you just one of my projections?"

"No." Arthur shrugs. "But you can't believe me."

\--

 

The insomnia's getting worse. He paces around his room, out into the hall, through the living room. He peers into the kids' rooms, but their faces turn away like they always turned away. He avoids the study, with its pictures and memories; he avoids the door outside. He could tear the house apart for all the good it would do him. He remembers too clearly, sometimes.

The bottle of wine is a logical progression. Two glasses in and the clarity fogs, the memories recede, the pain dulls. Dom leans back in his seat and lets himself relax into it completely. Not to sleep, but to rest. Just a moment.

An orange grove. Arthur tosses him a firm fruit, pulled from the branch. "Try this one."

Dom peels it, orange pulp lodging itself under his fingernails, juice spraying forth over his hands and wrists and chest. When he bites into a slice it's refreshing, tangy-sweet. "You quoted at me."

"To die: to sleep, no more." Arthur's lips curve smoothly into a tailored smile, fitted perfectly to his face. "To sleep, perchance to dream."

"On the bridge at New Year's. Before that big job."

"And in that sleep, what dreams may come?"

Dom lowers the rest of the orange, juice still dripping from his hand. "Mal nearly pushed us both in that night." Suddenly he's not thirsty. The sweetness dries sticky around his mouth. "She would've killed you, too."

Two steps forward and Arthur's close, reaching for the orange and taking it back. "She wouldn't have wanted me along." His eyes are intense; his smile fading back into the void from whence it came, a kick to Dom's adrenaline that reminds him of the existence of every inch of his skin. He knows, as Arthur knows, why Mal wouldn't have wanted Arthur dead too. But if that had been the price, she would have paid it.

"She never thought that through," Dom says against the rush, and catches himself before he reaches to take the orange back, hand already an inch closer. Arthur looks down at it.

It's criminal, the way his eyelashes curl like that against the straight lines of his face. He shouldn't be allowed, when Mal's still strong in Dom's memory and the taste of oranges is still so strong in his mouth. Arthur might taste like that. Had he taken a bite?

Dom doesn't remember leaning forward.

But Arthur tastes clean, vaguely alcoholic, hints of mouthwash. Like he looks like he should taste. He kisses back not carefully but meticulously, like he's learned it by rote. His hands come up to rest idly against Dom's side, where the gun used to hang; he doesn't pull back but lets himself fall against Dom when Dom pulls at his collar. Dom bites, Arthur skims his own teeth against Dom's upper lip. It's not Mal's slow burn or the fever pitch release of adrenaline they might've had in the real world, but Arthur's smiling again.

"You look just the same," Dom says against that smile. It's not what he meant to say at all. "How the hell do you always look the same?"

But that puts paid to the smile, wrong thing to say, and Arthur pulls his face away to look Dom in the eye. "Time passes differently in reality. You know that."

"But it's been years."

Arthur shakes his head, pulls his hands away; Dom lets him go, unclenches his hands, steps back. "Time passes differently in limbo."

"No," Dom says. It's not. It's late night and his own home, his own dream, and the kids have school tomorrow and Mal's still dead, has been dead for years. It's not limbo. He spun the top. He--

\--doesn't remember it ever landing.

"No," he says again, to himself this time.

"Sorry," Arthur replies all the same. "It's true."

Dom turns to the side, scrubs a hand over his face. Looks back. Arthur is still, constantly, watching him. Dom wants to kiss him again Dom stares at the pitcher of orange juice and contemplates another glass. Sleep's tugging at his eyelids and his mouth still tastes fuzzy, not minty at all. What was he...?

It's gone. Sand through fingers. Just an idea left, something someone told him once. In a dream. Limbo.

The house is dim, empty. Kids at school, Grandma off doing whatever she does. Dom's not at work. He doesn't work. Every day it's been the same, fast-forwarding the days because alone can't happen, alone will just make him think, and he... can't be allowed to think. So he's alone now. And he's thinking. Bathrobe and cup of coffee; he's tired of sleeping. Time to wake up.

Limbo is a small area, beyond which he hasn't dared to go, hasn't dared to create. Limbo is children who haven't aged in all the years he's been gone. Limbo is the thought that he could ever possibly go back, that it would ever be as simple as one phone call to get him that. Inside limbo he's got a shadow of the real thing. He knew that, before. Why'd he forget?

He walks back to the desk. The top is still there, spinning; has it ever stopped? Why hasn't he ever noticed?

He leaves it there. Walks away before the walls start spinning, too.

The house is quiet. Dom ends up wandering all the rooms, picking things up to examine them and trying to figure out what, exactly, he imagined them for. The vase from Saito's dream. The coat rack from some hotel room. The mirror he can't remember but probably has something to do with Mal. It's all significant somehow. It's just killing time until tonight. Living out the day because it's a dream but he's still going to live lucidly.

But he doesn't dream that night, or that night after that. Or the night after that.

\--

James hates high school but Phillippa already misses it, looking beautiful and radiant in her blue robes, red hair falling around her like some angel of academia. She's already going to grow up to be better than her dad. But no one will ever tell her that she can shape reality. She'll be safer that way. Never again a Mal or an Arthur or an Ariadne. Maybe the secret will die with the rest of them, and the governments will keep it locked up tight.

People and chatter all around him, it's overwhelming. Dom's no good with crowds anymore. Doesn't like the possibility that one day they might all point to someone and prove that he's been in denial this whole time. Lately he's been getting that feeling of 'too good to be true'. But he's here today, smiling across the crowd at his amazing daughter, tears in his eyes. James next to him has his phone out, most likely texting his girlfriend; Phillippa out there is the centre of the world right now, smiling so wide she could drown out the sun.

"You're proud of her," Arthur says in a thoughtful voice, just behind him. Heart hammering, Dom turns, and it wasn't just him, or just a dream -- that's Arthur, sitting on the bleacher row behind him, just as he was years ago. His right hand is closed around something, his left open and hanging between them, a question.

"Of course I'm proud of her. She's my daughter. She's -- stunning."

Dom looks back over his shoulder at her again, at the curve of her smile and the slope of her cheeks, the laugh lines around her eyes scrunched up tight. She's going far, going places, leaving him behind; he might not see her like this for a long, long time.

He turns to Arthur again, who hasn't moved a muscle, except at the corner of his mouth. The barest smile.

"You'll see her again, you know," Arthur murmurs, like he's reading Dom's mind. But then, they've been in and out of each other's minds, maybe too often. It's not impossible.

"I know," says Dom. "But not like this."

Arthur might be the only person Dom knows who wouldn't offer something comforting or at least approaching comforting. He just nods, once. "You can take a moment."

Dom opens his mouth, question ready, but Arthur opens his right hand, lets the red die fall from his fingers to clang against the metal below.

"We had to go all the way back," Arthur says, looking up again. "Otherwise you wouldn't wake up all the way."

The sound of the crowd is dimming, time slowing down. Dom breathes out. Looks back at James, at Phillippa, but James is looking at his cell phone, and Phillippa is lost in the crowd.

"They're waiting," Arthur says, a hint of urgency in the stress of his syllables. The holster at his side weighs heavy, hardly noticeable but still present, and Dom thinks for a moment of pain.

He reaches out and splays his hand against the side of Arthur's jaw, little finger perpendicular to his jugular, feeling for a pulse. He's not sure why, but Arthur seems to understand, holding still once again.

Dom asks, "How long?"

"Twenty minutes," Arthur replies, with that hint of a smile back again.

"What happens now?"

"We go," Arthur says, and brushes his left hand against Dom's right before reaching across for the gun.


End file.
